Cael groaned as he rose to his feet.

“I think I’m fine now.” Cael felt completely exhausted. With almost all of the excess emotion absorbed by Tar, there was nothing left for Cael to feel except a bit of lingering fatigue.

If Tar took any more energy out of him, he’d fall asleep right there. Even for a Mereo speech, he’d be pushing it on time if he actually lost consciousness.

He felt both elementals poking around his head to confirm for themselves, though Tar’s felt more akin to a cursory glance. With their bond as open as it was at the moment, Tar already had a pretty good idea of everything going on in Cael’s head.

Ava shrugged, “Good enough, I guess.”

Cael looked at Tar and he shrugged too, which looked considerably less correct due to his amorphous form. His silhouette kind of jiggled in place.

“Well, at least we learned something new today,” Cael said positively.

“You tend to learn a lot of new things every day when you’re five days old.” Ava pointed out.

“You shouldn’t be talking. Technically, you’re the youngest one here.” Tar quipped back.

“Yeah, and look how much I’m learning.”

“Anyways, what I learned is that spending time with you guys is a real headache.” Cael finished jokingly. He really had been getting a lot of headaches recently.

“Did you forget that you're poisoned? Headaches are one of the symptoms until it all clears out.”

Cael sighed. He did remember. If he remembered correctly, he was only three-tenths of the way through his perpetual headache phase.

But he had better things to do than complain about that now. He figured he was running out of time to stall.

The changeling strode toward the soul window and lay backward onto it.

He gave the elementals a thumbs-up and a grin before funneling mana into the window and tugging steadily on the sides, trying to stretch its shape around his body.

“I’m sure this isn’t how you’re supposed to be doing this. I doubt every changeling has a window to their soul placed somewhere on their body. Even if they did, this feels a little crude.”

“Maye, but I think it will work. I’m pretty sure it’s the thought that counts. If I think it works, it most likely will.”

And since nobody had any better ideas, Ava came over and helped him pull. However, even with four arms, they couldn’t quite get it around him.

Every time they made progress on one side, the opposite end would contract or a completely separate side would slip all the way back to its original position. It was like trying to wiggle into a hyper-elastic straitjacket.

“This is painful to watch,” Tar informed them.

“Then help.”

Cael had almost expected Tar to just continue watching the pair try and fail on their own, but a moment later, Tar was there, pulling all sides of the window at once. He tried pushing against it, but it pushed back just as hard.

Tar sighed. “Ava.”

“Got it.” She smiled mischievously and jumped on his chest.

Tar released the edges, and they snapped shut, sliding uncomfortably over his face.

For the briefest moment, Cael continued to fall backward before he blinked and found himself in the cafeteria, sprawled on the floor with both of the demons staring down at him with equal parts worry and confusion.

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You have gained the Skill [Excessive Emotion Resistance]

“Uh, hi. I fell.” Cael explained, blinking away the System box.

“Yes, you did.” The smaller demon offered him a hand and Cael took it. “And you are able to hear now.”

The changeling was pulled easily to his feet and he nodded in thanks and confirmation.

He looked down and smoothed his clothes out. With such an easy comparison, Cael was able to see that his human form was noticeably smaller than the changeling one. The well-fitting uniform was now loose and the sleeves fell further past his wrists.

The shoes and pants were similarly oversized.

Hell, in this world, he was even smaller than himself.

Looking even further down, Cael almost laughed when a pair of cat ears wiggled back at him from his shadow. Apparently, Tar felt like staying hidden for now. He wondered what that was about, but he wouldn't say anything.

“Sorry, but what did I miss?” Cael asked. Glancing around, he couldn’t help but notice that the speech had ended. Almost all of the students had disappeared after that.

“You have missed everything.” The smaller demon tapped his thigh contemplatively. “But an introduction will suffice for now.”

Without waiting a moment longer, he stepped forward righteously and placed his hand over his chest. “My name is Crashing Waves on the Shore of the Frigid Sea.”

Cael had to actually stop for a second to stare at him. [Read] was not happy with trying to translate that one. The demon’s name was a single word that roughly translated to that.

“...oh. Is that, like, a family name?”

“It’s the name of a person in my family if that’s what you mean.” Crashing Waves on the Shore of the Frigid Sea looked at him like he might be stupid, “That person being me.”

‘He sounds kind of pretentious. Let’s call him Crash.’ Cael was glad to see Tar taking this as seriously as usual.

Crash stepped back and the larger demon stepped forward, similarly placing his hand over his chest. Cael’s eyebrows rose in amusement. These two were completely ridiculous.

“My name is Set.” He stepped back once more.

Was that all? Cael had half expected it to be a paragraph longer.

“Right.” Cael took a step forward to introduce himself. Everyone else was doing it, so he figured, why not.

Placing his hand over his chest, Cael opened his mouth and yawned.

“Sorry about that. I’m still pretty tired. What I meant to say was; ‘My name is Cael.’.”

He stepped back and looked at Ava expectantly.

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You know he is.’ Tar laughed.

The bird rolled her eyes in exasperation and hopped onto the table with an awkward flap. She stepped forward to the edge and placed a wing across her breast.

‘What are you waiting for? Introduce me already.’

“This is Ava.” He supplied dutifully.

‘Is that all you have to say about me?’ She teased.

“She… is someone I have known for a good portion of my life.” Completely true, yet vague enough to mean nothing at all.

Crash nodded seriously, but Set looked like he was about to laugh.

Had Cael done something wrong?

"Well," Crash blinked evenly, "Since you took so long to wake up, you've missed your chance to be in any other group. We will all be seeing a lot more of each other for the foreseeable future."

"Group?" Cael figured this was probably what had been talked about in the speech he hadn't listened to.

Set sighed, "Yeah, groups of four rooming in the same sections. We have to share a bathroom and a living room for the semester."

"Who's our fourth?" Unless he was missing something obvious, Cael only counted three people.

'Probably her.' Tar said, as if on cue.

Cael turned around completely to where the elemental had mentally indicated.

"Huh." Cael took in the person before him.

"Huh?" asked the spider person. Her appearance definitely catered to the Mereo color scheme.

Her face and body almost seemed that of a human's. The only differing features were her eyes and hair. Her eyes were the pure black kind that you would normally find on a spider.

And her hair! It almost looked like a massive tarantula sat on her head. In the place of conventional hair, the long, spindly legs of a spider fell past her face or folded up on top of her head like fake braids and buns.

The spidery portion was a dark blue, not unlike the one Mereo used in its uniform. Similarly, she had silver accessories on many of the limbs that managed to display themselves as regal.

In practice, it was probably closer to armor, but it was still nice to look at.

"I'm Alice." The spider said, apparently approving of Cael.

"I'm Cael." He decided that she looked cool.

"Right. With introductions out of the way, we should probably try to figure out where exactly we are supposed to be staying for the next few years." Set held up an engraved metal card. "Do either of you know where 'R200' is?"